“The models just don’t predict this…”
Instant capture
In recent weeks, NASA’s ultrapowerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has given humanity an unprecedented view of the far reaches of our universe. And, not surprisingly, some of these dazzling new observations have raised more questions than they’ve answered.
For a long time, for example, scientists believed that the oldest and most ancient galaxies in the universe were small, slightly chaotic and misshapen systems. But according to Washington PostImages captured by JWST have revealed that these galaxies are surprisingly massive, not to mention wellbalanced and wellformed, a finding that challenges, and will likely rewrite, longheld knowledge about the origins of our universe.
“The models just don’t predict it,” said Garth Illingworth, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. WaPo. “How do you do it in the universe at such an early time? How can you form so many stars so quickly?”
Move over, Hubble
How WaPo explains, older images of the universe, captured by the recently dethroned Hubble Space Telescope, seem to confirm the widely held belief that the first galaxies were chaotic, random places. The JWST, however, seems to show that these findings were an illusion based on the limited capabilities of this Hubble.
“We thought the early universe was this chaotic place where there are all these clusters of star formation, and things are messed up,” said Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute. WaPolater adding that, before JWST was launched into orbit, the Hubble images “were missing all the cooler stars and the older stars. We were really only seeing the hot young ones.”
time machine
Although these findings have surprised the scientific community, they are not at all cause for alarm. Major technological advances, in astronomy and beyond, have a long history of leading to periods of largescale scientific discovery. Right now, it really does seem like we’re at one of those watershed moments, and discoveries made today can lay the groundwork for future advances, even decades down the road.
And really, discoveries like this mean JWST is doing exactly what scientists want it to do: it’s revealing new and exciting things about our mindbogglingly expansive universe, answering old questions and making new ones along the way.
READ MORE: The Webb Telescope is already challenging what astronomers thought they knew [The Washington Post]
Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope: James Webb takes a look at the most distant star in the universe